kylaw

The Land of Bad Dreams has received a positive review over at a little place called Publishers Weekly.

"Traditional poetic meter and verse forms serve as vehicles for macabre themes that challenge their restraint in Ward's captivating collection of weird poetry. In "Mary," written in rhyming quatrains, a dead lover entices his betrothed to a graveyard bridal bed. In "The Torturer's Confession," a dramatic monologue related in iambic pentameter, a torturer likens the wrack to a seductress who ministers to her victims as a lover. A trio of prose poems--"The Bat's Boudoir," "The Cat's Cortège," "The Rat's Repast"--are told as sardonic fables whose animal characters subtly show their predatory side. Ward (Prismatic) has a talent for using alliteration ("Slowly, smoothly, serried they circle") and the rhythm of her lines to conjure images perfectly suited to the eerie subjects of her constructions. This is especially evident in "The Feast of Mistrust," a lengthy narrative poem about familial skullduggery and intrigues in an imaginary kingdom that concludes the volume. Fans of the supernatural who like poetry in the classic Romantic tradition will enjoy this collection. (May)"

Oh, and the book itself is now available at Amazon.

And I have a cold.

On Monday, 2 April 2012, look for me at the Speculative Poetry Reading Night at the Yours and Owls Cafe. Kicking off at 7.30 pm, this event has been organised by Laura E. Goodin as part of her Australian Poetry's Cafe Poets residency. Margi Curtis (Voice of the Goddess & Other Poems ) and Leigh Blackmore (The Spores of Sharnoth) are also expected. You know what to expect - and I shall do my best to subvert it!

As evening approached, the humidity drained from Melbourne city like the dregs of sencha from an earthernware bowl. Seated as I was in the Oriental Tea House on Little Collins Street, I proposed to my companion that the elemental spirits had granted mercy to the army of Goths now gathering in Richmond. My perspicacious companion disagreed. He proposed that the unnatural concentration of white faces and black PVC had itself occasioned the drop in temperature. And it's true, that even at the height of the concert when the floor was rebounding underfoot and the air was a seething mass of music and crimson, the heat never touched me. Of course, I was down to my corset by that point.

I was never going to resist seeing the Sisters of Mercy, and if the chance to do it in an intimate venue only existed in Melbourne, then to Melbourne I was bound. Consider it making up for my pathetic excuse for an adolescence. But even when my knowledge was limited to the appearance of "Dominion" and "This Corrosion" on Video Hits, I always loved the Sisters. And they performed both!

What better way to set off a street that's already doing remodeled-genteel, than with goths? Black clad, scarlet-booted scarecrows in the coffee house, top-hatted coteries in the Mexican cantina, and above all the frilled, laced, and feathered column winding around the side of the Corner Hotel. Inside, the Corner offered exactly the kind of black, eccentrically-angled space with occasional columns and dubious carpet such an event requires. Passing into the cavern-like darkness, populated with those glistening, rustling figures, the last residues of the day lifted from me like steam. "At least I'm dressed for it," quipped the black-uniformed security guard. This was Roddy, with whom I built a certain rapport over the hour I stood marking my place at the front barrier before the first act came on. I had no prior idea who or what Kim Salmon was, but pairing the Sisters with a genuine insane blues singer was actually quite a good call.

At his request, I explained to Roddy a few things about the British post-punk scene and the Sisters themselves. By this point, the current threefold Doktor was visible on the stage. His astonishment at the band's longevity prompted me to consider my own obsession. I'd call it a rare week I don't listen to the Sisters in some form. A single track on the dance floor can make or break a club for me. The soundtracks for my novels in progress are thick with the Sisters; "Marian" and "Ribbons" bookmarking the points of strongest, darkest emotion. I told Roddy he was about to experience the real thing, the reason these people wore black. But when he asked me to explain the exact difference between Goth and Emo, I confessed myself stumped.

Then the smoke machine billowed. The stage was drenched in purple. The wavering silhouettes of the three microphones were all that could be seen; except by the people behind me who could also see my head. I had at least one friend back there somewhere, but I'd been hanging onto this barricade for the past two hours for a reason and this was it.

Andrew Eldritch has the most amazing skull. In the stage light, it made me think of Victorian phrenologists and what could possibly be read from that sculpted bone. He has strong, sculpted hands. He is a puppet master, there's no doubt about it. He controlled the stage and his off-siders absolutely, and exerted a near-hypnotic influence upon the audience. He spoke occasionally, the relaxed mode of his feeding-panther voice, that carried effortlessly. "Here beginneth the lesson." This audience knew it by heart.

They opened with a melange of "Doctor Jeep" and "Detonation Boulevard". Doktor Avalanche began pounding, Christo and Catalyst started strumming those howling, vertiginous riffs and they didn't stop. I know the history, I know how recent the current line-up is, but this was pure Sisters "slamming through." Right through your blood and bone. At the first skirls of "First and Last and Always", I was howling. Then we hit the first of the "new" songs, the ones that haven't been recorded. Except by people with IPhones.

"Crash and Burn" is Sisters and it's good. The lyrics are up on their homepage, and You Tube will here be found to be serviceable. But of the other new work, I have identified "Arms" and "Still" from the same sources. But not the one he announced, with fiendish glee, as "The Undress Box". But then, then the opening bars of "No Time to Cry" rang through the mist and as one, the audience convulsed.

Yes, they played "Dominion", "This Corrosion", "Ribbons" and "More": dear gods, to see him, hear him snarling more! There was no standing still: you could have been unconscious and still dancing in that crowd.  But they also played "Flood II", "Amphetamine Logic" (Nothing but the night to live for - oh, cry that to the full moon!) and "Alice", which is a personal favourite for reasons I have never quite fathomed. I think it reminds me of the first real parties I went to at Uni, in rickety terrace houses with stoners slumping across the stairs. You'd think that would be "Ribbons", but no: that makes me think of other things, rather further up the stairs.

They made us work for those encores: the thought did occur to me, that there was clearly no cellar below else we'd all have been down there by now. A royal prerogative, to make us work. But we earned ourselves "Something Fast" and then with a real and obvious joy, they launched into "Vision Thing". There was no flagging in pace or energy or sheer passion: Christo and Catalyst both followed that up with guitar solos as memorable for their acrobatics as their finger-shredding virtuosity. Those two were more than watchable, they were gorgeous and sang like angels. In any other company, they'd have been the focus. But here it was all for the master, when he came back on to perform "Lucretia, My Reflection".

And then, then, they started in on "Temple of Love."

I'm not entirely certain how I made it back to the Most Gothic Hotel in Melbourne. I think I must credit my boots; my perennial, hand-crafted boots, that have surely attained a totemic consciousness by now. Suffice to say I did arrive safely and in possession of everything I left with, saving my arm muscles and several remnant inhibitions. I rediscovered the muscles the next morning. Now, I have tea and memories.

Firstly, two poems from The Land of Bad Dreams have been nominated for the 2012 Rhysling Awards. These are the annual awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. "The Kite", which concerns neither the wind nor paper, has been nominated in the short poetry section, while "The Soldier's Return", a good old-fashioned ballad concerning good old-fashioned sorcery, has been nominated in the long.

Secondly, another review has appeared in Star*Line, the magazine of the Science Fiction Poetry Association ( 35.1, January - March 2012). I quote:

"The Land of Bad Dreams is as interesting as it is entertaining, as melancholic as it is witty. Maybe Ward wants to give us nightmares; maybe she just wants to share the things she sees in her own dreams. Either way, the works of this celebrated Australian poet deserve to travel the dark currents to far and distant lands, where they will undoubtedly haunt the nights of unwary sleepers." - Edward Cox.

Who am I to disagree?

It's taken rather longer than I anticipated in my previous post on this subject. But no matter: today I completed

For those who may have come in late, Necropolitan is the sequel to Necromance, my unpublished novel that has been variously described as dark fantasy, urban fantasy, stop-kidding-yourself-Kyla-it's-horror, and really, really gothic. And this despite the fact it contains not a single vampire or werewolf. Necromancers, yes. Ghouls, yes. Lawyers, most definitely.

Looking back, it really is amazing how the story and characters have developed. I know this is a bit of a cliche, but they keep doing things I did not plan and this Act especially has been a series of revelations for me. I swear, I thought the traitor was someone completely different. I take this as a sign that I am getting fairly close to the real story, which is infinitely better than the one which presented itself to me shortly after the completion of Prismatic.

One of the poems in The Land of Bad Dreams features discretely in these books: "Deshayes Cradle Song". It's actually quite important. But I'm not going to discuss, or even quote that here. Instead, I'm going to list the complete Necropolitan soundtrack. Soundtracks are something I compile as kind of emotional guides for books, that I can refer back to should I loose the thread. Make of this what you will:

"Persephone" - Dead Can Dance, In the Realm of a Dying Sun.
"First and Last and Always" - Sisters of Mercy, First and Last and Always.
"Backlash" - Front Line Assembly, Epitaph.
"Ice House" - The Creatures, A Bestiary.
"Hungry Ghost" -The Cure, 4:13 Dream.
"The Night Child" - Shinjuku Thief, The Witch Haven.
"Human", Angel Theory, Fiend sampler disc #1.
"Voodoo Dolly" - Siouxie and the Banshees, Juju.
"Dominion" - Sisters of Mercy, Floodland.
"Temptation" - The Tea Party, Transmissions.
"Kartika" - The Eternal, Kartika.
"Psychopomp" - The Tea Party, Transmissions.

I am now hovering somewhere in the opening chords of "Dominion". Should be fun.

Necromance and Necropolitan form one complete arc, and so must both be written. Anything beyond that is speculative at this stage, especially as I didn't get the grant, but the story certainly continues on and the background gets deeper every time I glance at it. From a certain perspective, the real story only begins after these books, which are after all an introduction. Eek.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my collection of dark poetry, The Land of Bad Dreams, has made the preliminary ballot for the 2011 Stoker Awards on recommendation.

I really can't thank you all enough.

Pyramid #3/38: The Power of Myth is now available from Steve Jackson Games, including my new systemless gaming article "The Journey of the Dead". Based upon the remarkable parallels between Egyptian, Greek and Norse descriptions of the trials of the newly dead, it suggests ways of incorporating this archetypal quest into your own role-playing game, no matter the setting or genre.

This is my second outing in Pyramid, the first being the campaign setting "Dominion" in #3/10: Crime and Grime. As usual, this issue is an intriguingly multifaceted affair, topics ranging from Baba Yaga to Babylon and bears. Yes, bears as a mythic archetype. And Baba Yaga in space. The real test of a myth is, after all, its flexibility.

On Monday, December 12th, 7.00 - 9.00 pm at the El Rocco bar (154 Brougham Lane, Potts Point), the Theatre formerly known as Blood presents four plays in the format of the popular "Script in Hand" events of Actors Anonymous. There will be hilarious old favourites, grim new offerings, chocolate, nuns, and dreadful things done to a piano. Five minutes walk from Kings Cross station, all funds raised go towards our impending resurrection!
See you there or strangled in tinsel.

Two reviews of The Land of Bad Dreams have recently seen the light.

According to Sheila M. Merritt, my "...dark visions have a striking note of whimsical levity: The overall tone is cloaked in Goth black leather, yet there is a gossamer element about it; an Edward Gorey sensibility, but with an edgy vibe." Her review was posted to Hellnotes on 4 November 2011.

Kenneth Faig Jnr. speaks of the "...glorious extended narrative... " of "The Feast of Mistrust" and engages in "...deep ponderings on what I shall call creatureliness." But also of my waspish figure. His review appeared in the newsletter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (Amateur Press Association) and is reproduced in full by my publisher at the bottom of this page.

I confess to still experiencing a kind of wonder upon receiving proof that, not only do complete strangers read my poems (even the long ones) but they seem to rather enjoy them!

A tale of two kitties, indeed...

The Land of Bad Dreams now has a web page, featuring such delicacies as this!



To view the full performances glimpsed herein, simply go to http://www.tabula-rasa.info/LandOfBadDreams/